Casting Lead Sheet

Had a really interesting day this week: a few of us from the church were invited to the yard of our contractors (Norman & Underwood in Leicester) who are doing a lot of stone repairs/replacements on the church (thanks to our HLF grant).

Apart from seeing the stonemasons at work on our stone, and having a go ourselves (see right - with one of our finished stones in front), we also saw lead sheet being cast (even though they are not doing our roof as it's not lead). This casting is done largely in the traditional manner on sand and N&U say that they are the only people in the country who still do it in this way; they can re-cast the lead from a particular roof and so send back essentially the same material as was removed from the roof, which pleases the heritage-minded.

The casting process is called a "throw", although that seems an odd word for such a carefully done process.  It requires a sand bed to be prepared, about 6m x 1.4m, which has to be done from scratch for each casting, obviously with great skill to get it perfectly smooth and level. This photo shows them aerating the bed first.  There is a wheel on a track on either side of the bed which helps as they run various wooden tools along it as part of the smoothing process, which is then followed by a final go by hand with upturned copper trays about a foot square.

 

The furnace at one end is lifted up and tilted to produce a river of molten lead (right) which goes into a trough and then they wait for the temperature to come down slightly to the desired figure (330 deg C, we saw). 

Then it is released and flows along the sand (too fast for me to take a picture!), and the two workers take the wooden tool sitting on the wheels along the bed at the right speed, with a bow wave in front (photo left), any surplus lead going off the end into an old bucket on wheels. Done!

Edit: I was also given a DVD by the company, which I watched last night (it was a bad night on TV).  I learned that the said wooden item is called a strickler, and to my surprise the verb "strickle" is in my dictionary.  It means (in general terms) exactly what the two men were doing with it!

The thickness of the sheet is controlled only by the speed at which the workers move along the molten lead. Here the lead has just been poured and they are about to do this critical run along the bed.









Then they cut off the edges and ends, and cut the product into separate sheets and roll it by hand, with all the still warm surplus going back into the furnace for the next go. This produces about 5m of sheet about 1.25m wide, and each go takes about 25 minutes so they can do 16 casts in a day. We saw the sheet cut into four bits, each weighing about 50kg (it was Code 6, I think).

I wouldn't want that job as it looks really physically tiring and I bet they have back problems. There is no doubting their skill at producing such a product but I have no idea how much it costs!

NB N&U did the lead casting for the inscription on the coffin of Richard III.  We saw a copy of this which I think is destined for a museum,














and they did an imprint in the sand from the original for us!

A really good day!

Using a Scaffold Tower

I have been very busy this last week.  I hired a scaffold tower for the whole week, as the fire alarm in church needed a servicing; they need a tower to get up high enough for their long pole to reach the detectors in the ceiling.  As this is an annual task, it had to be done in July, and so I had saved a set of other tasks that would be done at the same time.  These included a repair job to the CCTV camera which is mounted high up, the replacement of some high light bulbs, and the removal of the string from balloons which has got wrapped around the fans in the ceiling of the church hall.

At this stage I will vent my anger at the church architect who told my precessors what to fit in the church without a thought for the subsequent maintenance or the running costs.  The uplighter bulbs fitted five years ago are halogens and I have proved that switching the uplighters off saves about £50 per month.  The fire alarm is overly complex, and is wireless even though you could have hidden cables in the roof structure without them being noticed.  The CCTV camera (also fitted five years ago) had a wonderful pair of devices which allowed the video signal and the control inputs to share the same cable.  Great idea, but it's another two components which can go wrong - of course one did, probably in my view because of the known dampness under the suspended wooden floor.  Guess what? These boxes are no longer made so we would need two new, bigger ones at vast price.  However, we fixed that issue by laying the extra cable instead so now there are two less components to go wrong.

Anyway, there was a need to remove the tower from the church for Sunday and, as the hall was also in use, I brought it over to my house for "storage".  It seemed sensible to make use of it so this weekend I have:
a. Refitted the stuff in the gutters that prevents leaf build up (and they are now held in by some wire)
b. Fitted tingles to hold the three slipping slates in the area of the vent slates in the roof (done poorly as they were an afterthought...)
c. Tackled the poor pointing and defrassing on the west wall - there was thin cement over the pointing in some places, and spalling stone elsewhere, plus some large holes which I had blocked temporarily three years ago...
d. Then I had to tidy up the bits and dust all over the path below!

The aluminium 6 metre tower is a wonderful design.  It has three pairs of frames, with easily fitted clip-on bars in two lengths - one for the horizontals and one for the diagonals. Every item is very light; there are four stablisers, and wheels on the bottom of the frames.  On Saturday, Jane and I erected most of it in about 20 minutes; the difficult bit is positioning the top platform at the right level, but I found that the height was adequate at the top of the second frame which avoided that difficulty. I actually got her to go up it once just so she could agree that it is safe when you are up there (and so stop worrying!).  On Monday after doing the wall I took it down on my own and moved it to the church hall, all in about 45 minutes.

Then in the hall on Tuesday we attempted to remove the string from around the fans in the ceiling.  This string is the residue from balloons released by hirers who think it's funny to watch them going round! Sadly, this was one job we couldn't complete, although we did remove the balloons which surprisingly had been there for over three months with no sign of deflating.  The reason we couldn't fix the string was that the tower was too low with two sections and too high with three.  It turns out that we should have had some half frames which would have been just right, so that job will have to wait until next year.

On Wednesday the tower was taken away at last, and I have to say that it has been a most tiring week! I lost count of the number of times I went up and down the tower - at least I should be a bit fitter!

Recent Progress Photos

I promised some photos of the recent work in my last post.  Here's a view of the end of the finished wall, showing the problematic steps and the patio:

The rest of the dry limestone wall is to the left of the steps and goes along the side of the house - it's about 12 metres long.  Note on the right the small brick wall which retains some earth to protect the footing of the high rear wall; the small wall has the remnants of the paving as coping - and a spare seat!

Here's the view along the side of the house, towards the steps and patio.

Top Tip 1: when doing stone walling, avoid curves and corners - I made life very difficult for myself with my design.

(Left) A close up of the steps, showing the alternative lining for them - when I decided that mortared limestone would take up too much of the width of the steps, I used off-cuts of limestone flooring from the church work last year, cut into one inch strips and held together with NHL 3.5

On a sudden whim, on Tuesday I decided that the weather was cool enough to allow me to do lime work outside, so I decided to finish off the wall end to one side of the front gateway; I did the other side properly two years ago and this side has been dry assembled since 2011 - but was now spreading a bit.  This is the halfway stage when I had done the two levels of stone:

Here's the finished article with the corner coping stone attached on Wednesday.  As you might imagine, I had some difficulty doing this wall with the four year old hornbeam hedge in such close proximity!

Top Tip 2: Always finish a wall BEFORE planting a hedge beside it!!

Well, it's Progress, but not much!

I have been busy this year - honestly.  Much of this year's progress is based on the recent acquisition of my own angle grinder as a birthday present!  However, I don't feel I have much to show for my effort because the list of achievments is largely small jobs, or larger jobs which have been going on for too long.

This year so far, other than normal maintenance, I have:

a. Cut several large coping stones in half lengthways in order to make them a sensible size to cap a 4" thick brick wall.
b. Finished the dry stone wall which forms the fascia to the block/brick wall which holds the garden back, as it is higher than the house floor level.
c. Cut and fitted various items of stone flooring to make the wall lining to go beside the steps up to the lawn.
d. Cut and fitted yet more left-over flagstone into suitable sizes in order to act as coping stone on another low brick wall; these will allow people to sit on them fairly comfortably when we hold a barbecue on the patio!
e. Removed the remaining gunk from two doors and the panelling to the kitchen (the wall is 17" thick) using heat gun plus scraper, then a Stanley knife scraper then sander or just sandpaper, in order to enable painting of the surface. This was a nightmare job.
f. Painted both hall doors (to lounge and kitchen) plus the above mentioned panelling to the kitchen plus the inside of the front door, all in Laura Ashley Eau-de-Nil; although I didn't choose the colour, I am very pleased with the choice and the overall effect.
g. Chosen the shade of Earthborn claypaint for the walls of the hall, stairs and landing, as we finally decided that the yellow limewash done in 2011 was a bit too bright.
h. Painted the back and one side of the shed (see earlier) which I did in early March as I couldn't paint last year because it is too close to a lot of undergrowth.
i. Fitted the bath panel properly (at last!!)
j. Cleared the rubbish (an empty one tonne bag, some old bricks, various tubs of stuff and a rotting pallet) from the area beside the back window.
k. Laid some setts at the end of the paving to hold it away from the wall below the back window, as it's a bit high compared to the floor inside, and laid the last of the paving on sand to fill the gap.

The last of the jobs above to be done was the completion of the wall (b. above); having finished it a couple of days ago, I realise how this interesting but tedious job has been hanging over me for 32 months since I laid the foundations.  Perhaps I do feel that I have something to show for my hard work after all!

Now I have to finish plaster repairs in the hall (these are partly done so not listed above), then paint the hall, stairs and landing with the claypaint.  Then there's a widening of the drive, which will provide some earth to do the last of the landscaping in the back garden, to be followed by some more turf which will effectively complete the back.  Finally in the front I need to build one wall end with lime mortar in place of the present dry construction which was temporarily done in 2012. Then it'll be a few internal details like a new wardrobe and clearing the second bedroom, plus finishing the 2011 wardrobe in our bedroom and a lot of decorating!

I'll put some new pictures up when I've been able to buy some batteries for my camera...

Achievement for the Year

I wrote last January that a written list of tasks can be a bit depressing as it just looks insurmountable and has the opposite effect to what is intended.  I had a realistic list of a few jobs planned for the year, so I thought that I should update my progress (this is also a self test as I haven't already checked!):

a.  Finish the small brick wall and the barbecue stand at the back of the garden - Done
b.  Get some more limestone and finish the wall down the side of the house/lawn - Done apart from the far end
c.  Get some more limestone and do the other end of that wall, where I want to make a ramp up to the lawn with a retaining wall in front of the shed. - Done except the coping
d.  Finish decorating indoors (includes lime plaster repairs) - Done except for painting the repair at the kitchen door
e.  Plaster the walls of the wardrobe - No
f.   Fit the bath panel properly - No
g.  Refurbish at least one of the sash windows - Still not even one!
h.  Construct an 8' x 12' shed in the side garden - Done, and painted
i.   Construct a store (for camping equipment and rarely used tools etc) round the back - Well, I rebuilt the earlier shed for that purpose
j.   Repaint various bits outside where the black paint is peeling off (why?) - No

Other minor jobs here included a new lounge carpet (or was that last year?), finishing the tiling in the kitchen, laying some more turf, cleaning all the secondary glazing.  I also fulfilled the promise to my oldest brother to go and help him do a job on his equally old house for a few days. That involved four days to remove a flat concrete roof built on corrugated iron, mostly using an angle grinder, mallets and bolsters... 

In a sense, that's a lot of work achieved here as we had a £200k job done in the Grade I listed church opposite - fitting a limecrete floor, new boiler and toilets (Whoopee!) - as well as planning for next year's £200k of stonework repairs (thanks to an HLF grant).  Anyone who has ever been churchwarden at the time of having no vicar, and had to take on the treasurer job as well, will understand how busy I have been, even before the fight through the hoops of the CofE and the HLF and at the same time managing a contractor on site.

I should add a brief word on my operation - everyone (including the surgeon - "is it really a year?") thinks that the year since that event has just flown past.  My brother is in excellent health and my old kidney is now helping him to enjoy life as he used to (i.e. pre 2006 or so).  He really does have his life back.  As his daughter said to me: "we have had a good time doing things as a family this year - we had got used to Dad just being asleep every afternoon!"  I too am in excellent health and have had no real issues at all; the nephrectomy was effectively just two days of discomfort followed by a week or so of feeling delicate.  I cannot even say that I had any pain as I just avoided doing certain things for the few weeks, like stretching in an odd direction, or lifting things etc. For the whole story see http://diaryofakidneydonor.blogspot.co.uk/

I have to confess to one downside - although I recovered my strength very well, I do feel that I have lost some stamina and get tired (or fed up) quite easily.  Or is that old age just creeping up more quickly than I would like?

More Odd Jobs

We've been living here more than three years now, and I still have jobs left over from before we moved in. Recently I finished another of these, and 'Er Indoors is very happy with the result so I can feel quite smug.

The hall and lounge both have a wooden corner bead at each vertical right angle; this photo shows the hall as it was after the initial plastering and decoration:

The original feature was to maximise the amount of the visible wood by having a chamfer at the edge of the plaster instead of plastering flat up to the wood in which case you would only see a very small amount of wood. The chamfer allowed perhaps even half of the wood to be seen; of course at some time someone had papered the walls and covered all the wood!  I have been told that this plastering detail used to be quite common and is called a "quirk". 

My plasterer found the chamfer difficult although at each one he did make some sort of effort. As ever, there was no time to sort it before we moved in, so it has waited for my attention until this summer. Back in March I removed the paper and cleaned up the wood. Then in June I cut back the plaster to give a rough 45 degree chamfer on each side, and plastered these chamfers to make them smoother; finally today I applied the limewash to each of the four corners in the lounge (two for the window bay and two for the chimney breast), as well as limewashing various bits (replastered but unfinished) after the fitment of the new window in June 2011.

I'm very pleased that the limewash has dried to match the earlier stuff so you can hardly see the new application. Overall a messy job but well worth it. Now I just have to do the same to the ones in the hall!

I've been busy all summer with various jobs in the garden, as well as finishing a few other old jobs inside like the last of the tiles in the kitchen. One job that got done outside was to attach two pieces of coping on one end of the front wall which had also been waiting three years; as ever, the sort of job that you hope would take one hour actually took almost six.  At least I was right to delay doing it!! Now there's the other side to do, which I already know is a longer job as I have to rebuild the end three feet of wall as well.

The main reason for the lack of progress is that we have had contractors in the church for over four months.  They have laid 50 sq m of limecrete floor with underfloor heating and limestone tiles 2 cm thick, installed toilets and a servery, fitted a new boiler in the tower (instead of in the old damp boiler room) and all the associated drainage, electrics, pipework and the water and gas supplies this entails.  Since the church is Grade I listed, this is all far more complicated in preparation, design and approvals than your average house, and so has occupied a good deal of my time (being churchwarden). Now we just need £400k for the rest of the nave floor.

The Shed I've Always Wanted Part 2

I've finished the shed - first read Part 1 (second post below) if you've not done so!

After doing the frame and the roof, I did the horizontal cladding.  It might not be the normal way, but I found it much easier to work downwards, starting by tucking the top piece of tongue and grooved cladding under the eaves.  Later on I fitted a small piece at the top between the rafters; the need for this piece is why you can't do the roof before the sides, although I did add the battens and membrane at this stage.  As the front has a higher wall plate than the other sides (to allow for the door), I did that side last, but I carefully checked continually that everything was level so that the cladding looks OK.  Doing the cladding is quite a noisy job as there are so many nails and also the structure naturally acts like a sound box; hence I took my time and tried to do it in short noisy periods spread over several days.

The roof was next.  I decided to use slate as (a) all other roofs in the vicinity are slate and (b) when I looked at the cost of modern "tiles" they were all quite expensive.  When you add in the extra cost of decent boards on the roof, the total is only a bit less than buying slates (which only need battens not boards).  There's also the other point that I like to experience doing things myself in the traditional way, and a shed is a good place to learn.

I made sure that I had everything ready before I started.  I had some membrane left from doing the extension (see this post and others at that time) so I needed slates and some ridge tiles, plus nails.  In anticipation of this task I had already acquired slating tools as my birthday present from 'Er Indoors, and the cutter was invaluable.  When I had a roof structure ready, I found that my ridge tiles were all the wrong angle and I was one short; I went back to the yard and got four swapped plus an extra, all for £10.  I also found when I had finished that I had too many tiles, like, 35 spare! This was a bit of over-supply but I'd rather do that than run out when I need two to finish.  I also had to buy some NHL5 for the mortar under the ridge tiles; fortunately the only place within 30 miles that sells this had precisely one bag when I called in on my way back with the ridge tiles.  The roof was also a noisy job, and I bet the neighbours were pleased when I finished! The last two day's work were done on Tuesdays when my immediate neighbour is out all day.

After the roof there were a lot of little jobs, plus the small question of the door, which used my last pieces of cladding - somehow I had EXACTLY the right number of 3m and 2.4m lengths without having a load of 1m bits left.  Well, there were some 60cm bits and these were used as one of the storage shelves.  Another shelf is comprised of old floorboards resting on two of the rafters from the old extension (all left lying around in the garden for three years!) .  Even better, the sturdy workbench has a horizontal frame which is the lower half of the old front door (also left in the garden), and the top is two spare pieces of our 4cm bamboo kitchen worktop (found under the stairs).  As I've said before, I like recycling things, and the garden is a lot neater now.

So, here's the finished shed, at last:

It's not practicable to take a photo that shows the shelves, but the storage ones are on the right inside, and the work bench is on the left under the window. There is a final job which is to provide mains electrical power to it...

Feeling Older - Postscript

I wrote earlier this year (see here) about feeling older.  I now have a couple of postscripts to that entry.

Firstly, I have now used my senior's bus pass for the first time; mind you, I did forget the conditions and boarded a bus at 8.57am, only to be told that I could not use it before 9.00 am. I was tempted to try to beat him to the next stop, but then decided to wait for the next one.

Secondly, I recently had my hair cut in a different hairdresser's as my usual one had a queue.  I had a nice chat with the young woman and, when she finished, she charged me just £5.20. I thought this was cheap as the usual one costs £11, so I gave her a decent tip; then on my way out I checked their prices - she had charged me the "seniors rate" without me asking! Not good for my self-esteem, but I'll go back there.

Thinking of haircuts, when I had just moved to London a few years ago, I tried several places for a decent haircut.  At one unisex place, the young woman did a very nice cut and trimmed the hair in my ears (nasty sign of ageing) with the clippers.  Then, to remove the loose hair, she BLEW in my left ear!!  I think she realised that this was not the done thing (even though I was too surprised to comment!) as she didn't do the same on the other side.  I didn't go back there - I found a proper men's barber (just a few yards from Bermondsey Tube Station, if you're interested).

The Shed I've Always Wanted Part 1

I've been building a shed! Not just an ordinary shed, but a shed that looks good, will be useful and should outlast me. 

I already have one shed which I bought in 2011; it arrived on the back of a small truck and I was able to assemble it myself.  It only measures 7' x 5', which is a bit small for anything other than storage.  In fact, it is so small and crowded that I can hardly get inside it.  Frankly, it's a bit cheap and cheerful, and the roof is already sagging, so when I have finished Shed #2, everything will be moved from #1 so that I can repair that one.  My intention is that it will remain a storage shed, whilst #2 will be the place where I can do things in a decent amount of space; it will also store a few things like our camping kit which is currently kept in a large metal cupboard in the garden. The cupboard needs to go, as it is kept partly dry by an ugly old green tarpaulin.

The new shed is, I admit, a bit over-engineered (I am a chartered engineer after all!). It is basically designed as though someone was going to live in it (which I am NOT going to do).  I designed my shed in my head; the only drawings were a couple of sketches when I was ordering materials, just to make sure that I didn't forget something.  I also used Excel to get the dimensions of the sloping roof etc - even I cannot do hyperbolic functions mentally! The structure is tanalized C16 4 x 2, with an insulated floor supported on 9 brick piers, plus a slate roof (because it looks right).

The house shed measures only 10' x 6', but I feel that this is as large as the available space allows.  The only space large enough is on the raised ground beside the house, just inside the back gate, so it looks larger than it actually is.  I felt that 8' x 6' was a bit small but didn't want a huge shed, so 10' x 6' was a good compromise.  This gives 60 sq ft and I worked out that two sheets of 8' x 4' plywood were 64 sq ft, so a careful bit of cutting gave me four pieces for the floor and a 2' x 2' bit left over.  The long side is the side visible from our kitchen so I wanted the ridge of the roof to go across the short length, so that a gable end is seen. The visible long side has a window (see later) and the door.

Firstly I had to make the nine brick piers to support three beams.  The holes were dug and 4" of concrete inserted, then recycled bricks were set and built up - levelling was fun but a 5ft spirit level helped.

Then I had to make sure that my joists were going to support the edges of the bits of floor plywood, so the floor has ten joists (including two edges, plus the other two edges at right angles) which are separated by a slightly irregular gap of about 10 inches.  I used one inch structural grade plywood for the floor which is probably over-designed but I did not want to risk a sagging or bouncing floor. The floor also has 75mm Kingspan (= Celotex) insulation between the joists as I didn't want it to get cold (although I haven't yet decided whether to insulate the walls; they can wait).  Then there is a bit of thin OSB ("oriented strand board") on the other side to seal it in - I made the frame first and put the OSB on top (so it was now rigid) and then turned it over, did the insulation and then fitted the plywood floor.  As well as getting the edges supported by joists, I also fitted some half inch plank where the cuts in the floor were at right angles to the joists, so that those edges are nice and rigid as well.  Oh yes, I should mention that everything was screwed not nailed - I did try to hire a nail gun but no-one seemed to have one available.  Some photos:

Having done the floor, I used it as the platform to assemble the frames for the walls: two identical rectangles for the short ends, and one larger rectangle for the long back wall.  The two ends were erected and held in place by temporary supports, then I put up the back frame and screwed it all together, with a temporary joist at head height across the front to hold the sides in place.  The roof was next - I cut both ends of ten 5x2 rafters plus a bird's mouth, and a board to fit as the ridge, with five rafters each side.  The question was  - how to erect this on my own? My solution was to screw rafters #2 and #4 to one side of the board, and rafter #3 to the other side, then lift it all up, placing the bird's mouth cuts on the top of the two end frames, and then screwing them down (having previously marked the positions). I could then screw on the other halves of rafters #2, #3 and #4, and fit a horizontal member to each pair of rafters to complete each truss.  Finally, I could fit the 5th truss at the back, then remove the temporary joist at the front to fit the front truss.

The front wall had not been built as the height of the door was higher than the temporary joist that I had fitted, due to my desire to keep the overall height down.  This could now be done and I incorporated a space for the window.  The I finished off the top of the back wall, where I put in another window.  More photos:

The two windows were recycled from an old bathroom window (from the old extension - see here) which had large lower window and an opening narrow top window; I fitted a temporary plank across the top window, cut the frame at the bottom of the top window and made a new frame for the bottom of it, thus giving me two useable windows - the larger for the front and the other for the back. Sometime I will replace the glass, but it's not a high priority!

To be continued...

Feeling Older

I've just experienced another of those shocking things that happen as you get older: I found out that I was entitled to a Concessionary Bus Pass! It was bad enough last year when I found I could have had a Senior Railcard for a year or so, but the Bus Pass as well - what next?

Of course, I now have both these documents, as they save me money. I remember my mother was still paying full price for things like entrance tickets (she never travelled by train or bus!!) when she was 75 or 80 as she didn't want to accept that she was over 60! The Senior Railcard does cost money, but if you are likely to travel by train a couple of times a year, it would pay for itself very quickly as you get 30% off.  I paid for the three year one (£70) and that has already paid for itself in less than a year; I was slightly disappointed last year when I got it as I could have saved money on my earlier visits to my brother's hospital had I known. The Bus Pass has yet to be used, but free local bus travel anywhere in the UK really sounds like something that I will use. It irritated me only a week ago to be charged £1.80 on my OysterCard for a short bus journey in London. 

Talking of my OysterCard, another little way of saving money is to get your Senior (or any other sort of concession) Railcard linked to your OysterCard, so that you get the 30% discount there as well. They don't always tell you these things clearly and so you do have to look after yourself.  It's rather like booking ahead on the trains - if you travel off peak and are happy to get a specific return train as well as outward, you can book on-line and save a lot there as well. 

I have to say that I am feeling a bit older since my operation - I don't have quite the same energy levels, and am happy to sit doing nothing sometimes. If I mention this to t'other half, she says "welcome to the real world!"